Nemire’s paintings carry the same obscure emotional charge as video color test bands, glowing stripes of pure color that signal a pause before the start of the video’s narrative. The paintings are all variations on that “before” moment, endowing it with resonance as the primary subject.

The overriding mood in the gallery is inexplicably hopeful, perhaps a subliminal effect of the Buckminster Fuller term, “Tensegrity,” given to the exhibition. Fuller’s theory of tensegrity, the harmonious synergy and tension of parts within an integral structure.

Emily (as she is called) moved from making batik to painting with acrylic polymer on canvas at the age of 78 and in the next eight years produced around three thousand paintings. Their impact, both as an emotionally communicative experience and in terms of a painting intelligence, is staggering.